Close-Up

Approaching its midpoint, the Museum of Television & Radio's exhumation of John Cassavetes's television work has been full of line revelationsincluding two currently on view. Flip Side, made for the Canadian Broadcast Corporation in 1963, is a half-hour tour de force with Cassavetes as "JJ the DJ," a manic radio personality who spins records and chain-smokes while maintaining an epic off-air phone conversation with his estranged wife. "You think this job has changed me?" he demands, finally losing it under the assault of hostile on-air calls.

This solo act anticipates Eric Bogosian's Talk RadioIn Pursuit of Excellencean hour-long telefilm shown once on Shadows aside, his time had been wasted "playing gamespainful and stupid, falsely satisfying and economically rewarding." The show, which he wrote as well as directed, broods over the plight of a surly overachiever paralyzed by ambivalence. That the star Glenn Corbett is far too old to play a college senior only adds to the sense of entrapment.

Details

In Pursuit of ExcellenceWritten and directed by John Cassavetes
Through March 20, Museum of Television & Radio

Filled with grim freak-outs and turgid dream sequences, In Pursuit of Excellence is as constricted as its protagonistif not its creator. Cassavetes, who gets a major plug from host Bob Hope in the show's intro, was already well into the post-production of his self-financed breakthrough, Faces. In Pursuit of Excellence is a kiss-off by a man about to bust loose.